In short, we are the “captains of our own destiny” and our positions are not dictated by the U.S. Chamber on this or any other matter.

“The incident,” the Puget Sound Business Journal writes, “again underscores the fact that the business community, far from being monolithic, is just as politically diverse as the rest of the country.”

However, the reality is there already is someone standing between you and your doctor: health insurance companies. Single mother Ellen Hayden knows this from experience. After losing her mother at the age of 7 from breast cancer, Hayden has done everything she can to get regular mammograms. Following an abnormal mammogram, her doctor recommended that she have an MRI. After the scan, her insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, refused to pay for the procedure and is also refusing to pay for a follow-up second MRI her doctor has suggested.

Ned Helms, a former health insurance industry executive who now works at the University of New Hampshire, told Sea Coast Online that this is Hayden’s case is an example of “insurance people” getting between patients and their doctors:

“It’s understandable that this is an emotional issue because most patients believe that ‘nothing is going to stand between me and what I want to get done,’” said Ned Helms, a former health insurance industry executive and director of the N.H. Institute of Health Policy and Practice at the University of New Hampshire. [...]

“We have this notion in our political debate and popular culture that we can’t have reform because that means that government bureaucrats will make decisions but we already have insurance people playing that role,” said Helms

Helms went on to say that one of the major obstacles to attaining proper reform is the way insurance companies often “write their own rules for the road.” Late last year, former Cigna executive Wendell Potter left his 15-year career at the major health insurer and joined the fight for universal health care. He told Bill Moyers last July that politicians who warn about the government getting between patients and their doctors are “ideologically aligned with the [health insurance] industry.”

The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, which is largely backed by the coal industry, candidly revealed this strategy in a letter released today to Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Robert Byrd (D-WV). The Chamber of Commerce demanded that the senators use “their clout and seniority” to obstruct the health reform debate until cap and trade legislation is taken off the table and the EPA is barred from regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant. As Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette noted, Rockefeller has already rejected a similar proposal of blocking health reform unless the EPA stops reviewing mountaintop removal permits. The coal lobby has also pressured West Virginia state legislators to pass resolutions opposing clean energy reform.

The coal industry’s selfish push to block health reform displays how little it cares about West Virginia and the communities where coal is burned for energy. Not only do 19 percent of West Virginians lack health insurance, but coal is literally killing people:

– The American Lung Association reports that there are 24,000 premature deaths every year due to coal power plant pollution. In addition, the ALA research estimates that coal pollution causes over 550,000 asthma attacks, 38,000 heart attacks and 12,000 hospital admissions.

– A report by Physicians for Social Responsibility found that coal combustion releases mercury, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and dozens of other substances known to be hazardous to human health. These coal pollutants are associated with increased congestive heart failure, lung cancer, infant mortality, stunted lung development, and Ischemic stroke, among other diseases.

The national Chamber of Commerce is also fighting health reform tooth and nail. Like the West Virginia Chamber, the U.S. Chamber is dominated by coal and polluter interests and denies the science underpinning climate change. The U.S. Chamber’s extreme approached forced pro-clean energy companies Apple, Levi Strauss & Company, Mohawk Paper and the utilities Pacific Gas and Electric, Exelon and PNM Resources to resign from the Chamber. By killing both clean energy and health reform, U.S. Chamber President Tom Donohue may be hoping to protect his own wallet. Donohue sits on the board of a major coal industry player, Union Pacific.

Indeed, one of the most powerful corporate front groups, Americans for Prosperity, is focusing its efforts on defeating health reform. Although AFP is backed by oil industry giant David Koch, his ultimate goal of stopping clean energy appears to begin with stopping health reform.

As the story of six-year-old Madison Leuchtmann of Franklin County, MO, demonstrates, even children are victims of this insurance company abuse. Madison was born with bilateral atresia, which means she lacks ear canals in both ears. In order to hear, she wears a special device on a headband that allows her to make out sounds. Despite her disability, Madison is at the top of her kindergarten class and is slowly learning to read.

Yet Madison, due to her growth, will soon require a new hearing implant to be able to recognize sounds. Her hearing and speech therapist warns that “if she doesn’t get her implants by age seven, she’s not going to be able to blend her words. … She won’t be able to hear herself [talk].” Madison’s pediatrician, Dr. Randall Clary, also insists that without the implant, the girl may never be able to hear again.

Unfortunately, the Leuchtmann’s family insurer, Cigna, has issued “one denial after another,” flatly refusing to cover the $20,000 bill for the implant. In a written statement to the local news station Fox 2, Cigna explained, “It is not unusual for commercial benefit plans to exclude hearing assisted devices,” prompting Dr. Clary to angrily respond, “This is obviously medically necessary. You have a child that has no ear canals!” Dr. Clary also told Fox 2 that he sees these sort of denials “on a weekly basis.” Watch Fox 2’s report:

The United States is the only developed country without a universal, cradle-to-the-grave health care system. In no other developed country would a girl be on “the verge of never hearing again” because a for-profit insurance company decided that its bottom line was more important than keeping a child from going deaf.

Among the latest corporate front groups orchestrating a campaign of misinformation against health reform, ThinkProgress has learned, is an outfit called the “Center for Medicine in the Public Interest” (CMPI). CMPI was originally a project of the Pacific Research Institute, an older corporate front established in conjunction with Philip Morris to fabricate academic support for the tobacco industry. Some of CMPI’s recent attacks on health reform have included:

– CMPI produced a series of “US Policymaker” interviews about health reform featuring exclusively Republican lawmakers — such as Reps. Louie Gohmert (TX), Bob Inglis (SC), Jack Kingston (SC), Tom Price (GA), Joe Wilson (SC), Michele Bachmann (MN), Paul Ryan (WI); Sens. Jim DeMint (SC), Jim Bunning (KY), David Vitter (LA) — attacking health reform. CMPI also produced a series of videos mocking health reform and the public option.

– CMPI created various video games distorting health reform. They serve as gimmicks to recruit users to sign up for CMPI’s daily anti-reform talking points.

– CMPI launched a website called “Hands off my Health” showcasing the supposed horrors of universal healthcare programs in Canada and the UK. CMPI officials centered a media campaign around Shona Robertson-Holmes, claiming she had a brain tumor the Canadian system refused to treat. However, the Ottawa Citizen reported that CMPI has been exaggerating Holmes’ case, and that she in fact had a benign cyst.

– CMPI helped sponsor anti-Obama tea party protests.

– CMPI has subcontracted GOP consulting firm Political Media to develop a blizzard of online ads attacking health reform. In the weeks preceding the House vote on reform legislation, CMPI ran ads on sites like the Politico, DrudgeReport, WashingtonPost.com, WashingtonTimes.com with an animated sheep stating that the public option is a “baaaaaad idea.” CMPI plans to run many more ads as the Senate begins debate.

The head of CMPI, Peter Pitts — a former Bush administration FDA communications official and director of marketing at the Washington Times — has a long history of using his CMPI title to hawk the interests of corporate clients. The Bioethics Forum has noted that CMPI, which receives drug company money, aggressively defends almost any practice of the pharmaceutical industry. For instance, as Slate reported, Pitts appeared on an NPR special to downplay fears about the side effects of antidepressants like Prozac, but failed to disclose his position as a VP of the PR firm Manning Selvage & Lee, which at the time represented Eli Lilly Inc. (the maker of Prozac), GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer.

In March of this year, Pitts became the head of international corporate PR firm Porter Novelli’s healthcare division. Despite the fact that CMPI’s latest 990 tax form states that Pitts spends 40 hours a week at CMPI, a representative from Porter Novelli told ThinkProgress that Pitts actually works on a day to day basis in his office at Porter Novelli. Asked about how the firm engages in the health reform debate, ThinkProgress was told by Porter Novelli that Pitts is “pretty much our voice.” Porter Novelli specializes in using social networking and other stealth marketing techniques to help drug companies avoid FDA regulations on marketing pharmaceutical products. Since Pitts joined Porter Novelli, CMPI has continued to shill for drug companies.

Although CMPI refused to tell ThinkProgress about its funders, Pitt’s firm Porter Novelli has a financial stake in blocking reform. Porter Novelli is a subsidiary of the global lobbying and communications giant Omnicom Group. Other Omnicom Group subsidiaries include Frank Luntz’s firm Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research — which counts insurance companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Health Insurance Plans of New York as clients — and Clark and Weinstock, a major lobbying firm representing healthcare clients like the health insurance company HealthNet.

Porter Novelli has also created front groups for the insurance industry in the past. In 1998, Porter Novelli managed the insurance industry’s “Health Benefits Coalition” group to kill the Patients Bill of Rights. As former insider Wendell Potter explained, Porter Novelli helped the industry form alliances with right-wing groups like the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, as well as conservative talk radio. Similar to how CMPI is currently working closely with tea party groups to attack “big government healthcare,” Porter Novelli developed a message that the Patients Bill of Rights was part of a “big government agenda” the “Democrat” party failed to pass 1994.

CMPI is among a constellation of mysterious corporate front groups attacking reform. As the Associated Press reported over the weekend, a secretive group called Americans for Quality and Affordable Healthcare has operatives placing anti-health reform columns, booking anti-reform pundits on talk radio, and organizing anti-reform panel discussions. AQAH also refuses to disclose its backers, but it is apparently being managed in part by the North Carolina law firm Moore & Van Allen.

Should lawmakers further water-down the SFC bill, the industry will stand to profit, the report implies, suggesting that the “bull” case scenario is a reform package that brings in millions of new government-subsidized customers without requiring the industry to pay any new taxes. Industry revenue would grow 6.9% from “more moderation of provisions in the current SFC plan or as a result of changes prior to the major implementation in 2013,” the report states. The report therefore suggests that the insurance industry may actually prefer watered-down reform over nothing. The Wonk Room has more. (Chart courtesy of FDL)

In order to combat the issue, the Senate Finance Committee has included sections in S.1631, the Customs Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Reauthorization Act of 2009, that would ban the importation of goods made “with convict labor, forced labor, or indentured labor under penal sanctions.” Such a measure by the world’s largest importer would strike a crucial blow against the use of child and slave labor.

Business groups and their lobbyists, however, are not taking kindly to the measures. The D.C.-based business newsletter “Inside U.S. Trade” reports that business groups are “worried” about the effects of such a provision, and they expect to see industry lobbyists and foreign governments profiting from child labor to form an “ad hoc” coalition to oppose it:

Business groups are worried by the potential effects of provisions banning the import of all goods made with convict labor, forced labor, or forced or indentured child labor that were included in a customs bill sponsored by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-IA)

Business sources say this reporting requirement could cause DHS to more actively seek out imported products made with child labor, forced labor or convict labor. [...]

Sources conceded that this was a sensitive issue because industry groups do not want to be seen as opposing strict measures guarding against human rights abuses. However, one source did expect a push from lobbyists closer to the finance committee mark-up of the bill, and speculated that U.S. industry groups and foreign governments could form ad hoc coalitions to help send a united message.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow covered the story last night. Addressing the business interests opposing the measure directly, she said, “You think that child labor and slave labor and forced convict labor are cheap and therefore cool with you? Go ahead, make your case. I would love to hear it …. you child labor-endorsing, pro-slavery freaks.” Watch it:

(HT: Openleft)

Senior Bush administration figures including Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Baghdad, and Jay Garner, the retired general who led reconstruction efforts immediately after the war, are leading a new business push into Iraq.

The two one-time senior officials are among a raft of former US soldiers and diplomats either leveraging their war experience helping foreign companies to enter the Iraqi market or starting businesses there themselves.

Recently, former American diplomat Peter Galbraith, who was a key adviser to Iraqi Kurdish politicians, admitted that “he has had business dealings involving oil companies in Iraqi Kurdistan since 2004.” “The business interest, including my investment into Kurdistan, was consistent with my political views,’’ he told the Boston Globe. “These were all things that I was promoting, and in fact, have brought considerable benefit to the people of Kurdistan, the Kurdistan oil industry, and also to shareholders.’’

PALMISANO: If you have a problem, you would just say ‘look I have a financial problem, can you help me’ and doctors will help you. If somebody couldn’t pay, we just send them a note, ‘you haven’t paid, is there a reason you can’t pay?’ All they have to do is give us any reason and we just wrote off the bill, forgot the bill. That’s what doctors do.

Watch it:

DCI Group, in addition to its record of setting up “Smokers’ Rights” fronts for tobacco companies, has worked closely the private health insurance industry in the past to thwart legislation to improve the health care system. Additionally, Palmisano has been working closely with Republican lawmakers, like Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), who are most interested in torpedoing health reform to score political points.

Blankfein dismisses any suggestion that Goldman needed to be bailed out, and, by extension, rejects any notion that the firm is now profiting from public support. Sure, he took $10 billion from Washington’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). But the bank has since repaid the cash, with healthy interest — 23%. Goldman also benefited from the federal bail-out of the huge US insurance firm AIG. Goldman had bought $20 billion worth of insurance from AIG and received billions of dollars — perhaps as much as $13 billion — when Washington pumped $90 billion into the stricken giant. But Blankfein insists Goldman was “hedged” against any AIG losses, in the best possible way — with cash.

Of course, Goldman’s profits have been driven in large part by its access to cheap federal dollars, and the firm may have gone under were it not for its status as a “too big to fail” firm. But Blankfein told the Times that he is just a banker “doing God’s work.” And evidently God’s work — bonuses and all — cannot be questioned.

FOC is now selling coal to children. ThinkProgress obtained the “Let’s Learn About Coal” coloring book, which asks children to unscramble statements about the “advantages” of coal, such as “Than coal other cheaper is fuels” (”Coal is cheaper than other fuels”). Kids also learn that coal is “important” and “provides jobs for lots of people!”:

The FOC Ladies Auxiliary has been handing the coloring book out to children around West Virginia as part of a “Coal in the Classroom” campaign. Coal officials go into schools and give presentations about the importance of coal. “We’d really like this to be statewide, that it be mandatory in the schools that they learn about coal,” said FOC ladies auxiliary president Regina Fairchild in January. The ladies auxiliary is also recruiting members for its “junior” FOC group, open to “girls and boys ages 8 to 16.”

Additionally, FOC ladies auxiliary members have visited children in West Virginia hospitals to give them a “special present“: Mr. Coal, “a small, black Labrador stuffed puppy meant to bring a smile to kids’ faces during hospital stays.” (Coal pollution kills 24,000 Americans each year.)

Last year, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), another industry front group, also tried to make coal seem warm and fuzzy by creating the “coal carolers” — illustrated lumps of coal singing Christmas carols whose altered lyrics praised coal power. After widespread scorn, ACCCE took down the carolers. Find out more on what coal is really doing to Appalachia at Appalachian Voices.

This afternoon, the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees voted 16-3 to approve the proposal for the new dorm, which will be named the “Wildcat Coal Lodge.” Significantly, two of the “no” votes were from faculty representative Ernie Yanarella and Student Government President Ryan Smith, who said he opposed the motion “as a voice for the student body.”

Students in the audience were reportedly not allowed to speak at the meeting. After the vote, people began chanting, “Move forward, not backward,” forcing the trustees to temporarily recess. More on the events at the meeting:

The vote set off shouts from about 30 protesters, mostly students, who attended the meeting.

“Big Coal is about to go down, and the university’s going down with them,” said Cor de Jong, who described himself as “a Lexingtonian and a basketball fan.”

A statement from students was passed out to board members moments before the vote. “They did not read our statement,” said Katie Goldey, a senior majoring in international studies. “They weren’t even given a chance to read it.”

Ironically, because the building costs more than $5 million, it is required to “meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.”

The coal industry has been taking a greater “public role” in the University of Kentucky lately. While Craft has already donated millions of dollars and has a basketball practice facility named in his honor, this is the first time that coal is being specifically recognized. Last weekend, however, there was a “students only” basketball practice “sponsored by Joe Craft and the Friends of Coal.”

The battle over America’s clean energy future is increasingly being fought on college campuses. As Greenwire reported recently, environmentalists are turning to student activists to get the word out about dirty coal, while American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — the coal industry’s biggest lobbying group — “spent the summer sending activists to 264 cities in eight states, where they attended community events and visited college campuses.” More here and here on efforts to get dirty coal off U.S. campuses.

Yet this afternoon, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) broke with the Democratic caucus that he is a member of and vowed to join a Republican-led filibuster if the public option is not removed from the bill. In response, insurance company stocks — which plummeted Monday as Reid made his announcement — shot up after Lieberman made his announcement around 1:30 pm:

Lieberman’s opposition to the public option puts him completely out of step with Connecticut voters. As this polling from 538.com’s Nate Silver shows, voters in every single one of Connecticut’s congressional districts favor the inclusion of a public option in health care legislation by wide margins. The stated reason for Lieberman’s opposition to the public option — that it would increase the debt and create another entitlement — is misplaced. As ThinkProgress has noted before, the public option would be self-sustaining and would cut the deficit.

Insurance giant Aetna, represented by the blue line above, fared the best among all of the health insurance companies. Aetna is based in Hartford, CT. It is also the tenth largest single private contributor to Lieberman’s re-election committee.

The New York-based investment bank Goldman Sachs has “set aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2009,” which is a 46 percent increase from last year. But according to a Goldman adviser, Wall Street’s record pay is necessary “to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all”:

A Goldman Sachs International adviser defended compensation in the finance industry as his company plans a near-record year for pay, saying the spending will help boost the economy. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths, who was a special adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said yesterday at a panel discussion hosted by St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

At the same time that Wall Street’s pay has skyrocketed, pay cuts in other sectors “are occurring more frequently than at any time since the Great Depression.”

While record bonuses may indeed spur spending on million dollar apartments in New York City, the growth in Wall Street pay — and the growing share of national income that is going to the richest Americans — has not translated into shared prosperity. Consider, “back in 1985, the average annual salary for all workers across the country was actually a bit higher than the average [Wall Street] bonus ($19,000 to $13,970),” but “while the average bonus soared almost 14 times higher (by 2006), the average salary has essentially been stagnant since the mid-1980s.”

Goldman Sachs is able to make its current profits ($3.19 billion last quarter) — and thus pay huge bonuses — because of government programs aimed at reviving the economy, which allow the company to make “big bets using cheap dollars.” As Simon Nixon wrote, the profits “aren’t the due rewards for exceptional skill but gifts from taxpayers.”

The Chamber of Commerce quickly tried to quash the reports that it had reversed its “Scopes monkey trial” stance. Chamber of Commerce official Eric Wohlschlegel broke into the press conference held by the Yes Men at the National Press Club, shouting, “This guy is a fake!” After a “mild shoving match at the podium,” Wohlschegel told reporters, “It is a very sad day.” U.S. Chamber of Commerce official Thomas J. Collamore decried “public relations hoaxes” and called for “law enforcement authorities to investigate this event”:

Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change. These irresponsible tactics are a foolish distraction from the serious effort by our nation to reduce greenhouse gases.

Of course, it is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other right-wing corporate groups that have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting “public relations hoaxes” to “undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.” As PG&E Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee explained his company’s departure from the Chamber, “extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics seem to increasingly mark the Chamber’s stance on this issue.”

It’s doubtful that the Chamber — chaired by race-baiters and corrupt global warming deniers — will now be decrying clean coal carols, climate skeptics, fearmongering, and broken economic analyses as it spends over $100 million a year to lobby Congress.

This is the unsustainable path we’re on, and it’s the path the insurers want to keep us on. In fact, the insurance industry is rolling out the big guns and breaking open their massive war chest – to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo. They’re filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads. They’re flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions.  And they’re funding studies designed to mislead the American people. [...]

It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bogus. And it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, “Take one of these, and call us in a decade.” Well, not this time. The fact is, the insurance industry is making this last-ditch effort to stop reform even as costs continue to rise and our health care dollars continue to be poured into their profits, bonuses, and administrative costs that do nothing to make us healthy – that often actually go toward figuring out how to avoid covering people. And they’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exception from our anti-trust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.

Watch it:

Of course, the best way to keep insurance companies honest would be to pass a robust public health insurance plan — a provision that Obama did not talk about in his weekly address.

Last night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow called Phillips out for using deceptive tactics and fear in his campaigns, noting in particular his role in creating the ads which portrayed former Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) — a triple amputee and Vietnam war veteran — as a terrorist sympathizer. Phillips stood by every single example of his work for his Republican and corporate clients, adding that he indeed does believe Cleland didn’t have the “courage to lead on the war on terror.”

Maddow extracted confessions from Phillips that he had in fact worked for a Jack Abramoff client to pressure members of Congress to vote against legislation that would have made the U.S. commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands — where Chinese workers were forced into prostitution and mandatory abortions — subject to federal wage and worker safety laws. Even given the deplorable conditions at the sweatshops, Phillips was unrepentant. “I don’t have an issue with it,” said Phillips, adding, “I’m not going to disown it.”

Phillips defended his methods with a curious argument. He disregarded the morals of his tactics, then explained that no matter what his organization says, who funds them, and how they operate, he and his corporate backers have every right to be “involved in the process.” Maddow conceded that point, but asserted that AFP’s fear-mongering and lying is simply bad for the country:

MADDOW: And I have to tell you, because we’re making this about you and me, is that I personally think that you and the folks who do what you do are a parasite who gets fat on Americans’ fears.

Watch it:

AFP, which was founded and is currently funded by David Koch of the Koch Industries oil refining empire, maintains a variety of mini-front groups to attack progressive labor efforts, clean energy legislation, and most recently, health reform. AFP places multimillion dollar ad buys knocking reform, employs dozens of high level Republican operatives planning “grassroots” events, and rents buses crisscrossing the country to shuttle anti-reform speakers to their rallies.

In the state of New York, insurers are legally prohibited from discriminating against individuals who submit large claims. So when Guardian, a major insurance company, was faced with the high-cost claims of 37 year-old muscular dystrophy patient Ian Pearl, it decided to cancel its entire line of coverage in the state of New York rather than pay for Pearl’s claims. In an e-mail obtained by The Washington Times, it was revealed that one executive at the company refers to patients like Pearl as “dogs” that the company can simply “get rid of”:

Legally barred from discriminating against individuals who submit large claims, the New York-based insurer simply canceled lines of coverage altogether in entire states to avoid paying high-cost claims like Mr. Pearl’s. In an e-mail, one Guardian Life Insurance Co. executive called high-cost patients such as Mr. Pearl “dogs” that the company could “get rid of.”

A federal court quickly ruled that the company’s actions were legal, so on Dec. 1, barring an order by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Pearl will lose his benefits.

The cost of Pearl’s annual treatment is approximately $1 million a year. The Pearl family is unable to receive the quality health care that Ian needs. “One-on-one skilled nursing is essential,” Mrs. Pearl said.

– “They don’t represent me,” says Mark Jaffe, CEO of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, which is a dues-paying member of the national group. … Jaffe also scoffed at the US Chamber’s oft-repeated claim to “represent 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions.” … “They are playing games” with their numbers, Jaffe said. “They don’t have half the businesses in America as registered, dues-paying members.”

– Jaffe’s objections to the US Chamber’s policies were echoed by Rob Black, vice-president of public policy for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. “We take a fundamentally different approach than the US Chamber,” he said, adding that while the national Chamber opposes the Waxman-Markey climate bill, “we support a market-driven cap-and-trade system.”

A day after this public scrutiny began, the Chamber is quietly backing down. At a press conference this morning, Chamber officials “repeatedly cited a membership of 300,000. That’s a tenth as many members as the Chamber claimed a day earlier.”

Apparently, the Chamber’s claim to “represent” the 3 million individual members of local chambers is solely based on the fact that those local chambers are members of the national group—even though many of those chambers’ individual members do not have a direct relationship with the national body. To get an idea of the tenuousness of this connection, consider the American Highway Users Alliance. Like the Chamber, the AHUA has worked to undermine climate legislation, and counts the American Automobile Association as a member, which itself has 51 million members. The AHUA has never pretended to speak for those 51 million drivers.